There is an increasing user demand for content provided from content providers over the Internet. Such content comprises among other things films, games, music, video telephony etc. Most customers enjoy these services via a broadband access from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) but in many cases the ISP buys the access and backhaul aggregation from an Access Network Provider (ANP). In most cases the ISP provides the login service and the subsequent allocation of the Internet address to the end user's equipment. However the ISP does not know the individual speed of each customer's connection, its technology type or the location of that connection.
Application Providers (AP) usually have a direct relationship with the end user, independent of the ISP or ANP and they have limited or no knowledge of which ISP an end user might be using, yet alone the ANP. The IP address used by the end user may have been network address/port address translated (NAT) by the ISP and in some cases subsequent address/port translation can take place. In addition, the IP address allocated by the ISP may be to a residential gateway that performs network address translation of local terminal IP addresses, and the terminal requesting the service may be one of a number, each with a private IP address allocated by that gateway or other means.
Due to this lack of knowledge of which ISP or ANP the end user is using the content provider cannot directly establish any properties of the end user's access connection.
EP2169 914 describes a method and system for content delivery in which a plug-in at the end user system gathers information about the end user system such as IP address and characteristics of the end user system via a run-time application environment hosted in the end user system. These characteristics are thereafter used by an algorithm to determine the suitable content delivery bit-rate. However, this relies on deploying and maintaining software to the end user's device, which becomes more problematic with the increase of various smart devices. Also, this technique cannot determine the geography of the user to facilitate the closest content cache or provide any control path to the access network to prioritise content delivery.
Hence, there is a need to provide a method and system for providing information to an application or service provider regarding the properties or characteristics of access networks used by end users, in order to optimize the delivery of applications or services, which is independent of the type of end device and where it is located.